This August there are more than two dozen writing conferences and workshops. Some conferences and workshops will be held online, but most will be held in person or use a hybrid format.These writing events offer everything a writer might want: intensive workshops, pitch sessions with agents, how to market your books, discussions - there is something for everyone.
I have included conferences with deadlines that have already passed on this list to give you advance notice. If you miss an application deadline, put it on your calendar for next year. Quite a few conferences offer scholarships, so apply early. Plan ahead!
For a full list of conferences held throughout the year see Writing Conferences.
Be sure to check out Highlights list of workshops. They offer many throughout the year.
(Image: Lake Sunapee: Flickr)
_____________________
First Friday Book Talk & Reading Series. August 1, 2025: Online. "First Friday Book Talk & Reading with Charlie Peck. Author of "World's Largest Ball of Paint." Online event.
Florida Authors and Publishers Association Annual Conference. August 1 - 2, 2025: Orlando, Florida. "Six (6) optional small-group workshops are being scheduled, offering attendees options a more intimate setting to learn about specific topics related to the publishing industry. These focused workshops will be offered a la carte and are scheduled so that you may register for up to three (3)."
Into the Springs Writers Workshop. August 1 - 3, 2025: Yellow Springs, OH. Into the Springs is a full weekend of shared sessions, events and lunch, making your interaction with featured guest instructors and writer participants easily accessible.
Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference. August 2 - 8, 2025: Montpelier, Vermont. The conference is designed for writers with graduate degrees or equivalent experience. Workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, as well as readings, craft classes, and individual consultations with faculty members. "At the heart of the Postgraduate Writers' Conference's unique model is the small workshop size, with groups led by acclaimed faculty limited to five or six writers. The intimate format allows for an extraordinarily in-depth, far-reaching discussion of participants’ work. Beyond the daily group sessions, each member has an individual consultation with the workshop instructor. The schedule also features a rich menu of readings by faculty and participants, craft talks, generative writing sessions and social events that galvanize our vibrant, inclusive community."
Frost Place Poetry Seminar. August 3 - 7, 2025: Online. The Seminar schedule features a daily presentation/discussion exploring aspects of craft and technique, an afternoon workshop of participants’ poems or individual, virtual meetings with faculty, and an evening reading, some by faculty poets and others featuring participants. The application deadline is July 1, 2025. Will be held online.
Poetry, Memory, and Creative Flow: A Generative Two-Night Mini. August 5 - 7, 2025: Online. xplore the power of poetry to connect with your roots, ignite new ideas, and transform your writing in these two inspiring sessions with award-winning author Aida Salazar.
Poetry and Flowers: A workshop on beauty and resistance with Taneum Bambrick. August 5 - 28, 2025: Online. This course will indulge in excess, abstract, and exclamation–will celebrate flowery language. We will read Bryan Byrdlong’s Strange Flowers, excerpts from other works such as Benjamin Garcia’s Thrown in the Throat, and poems from many other writers that personify or in other ways consider flowers as vehicles for communicating pain, possibility, joy, and love. With weekly prompts, each student should leave with approximately three poems, all of which will receive feedback through peer review and from the instructor.
Application deadline June 10.
Black Voices: An In-Community Retreat for Storytellers. August 7 - 10, 2025: Boyds Mills, PA. This 3-night/4-day retreat is designed to spark your creativity and foster connections with fellow storytellers. Join Valerie Bolling, Jas Hammonds, and fellow storytellers for this in-community retreat for Black writers and illustrators. With a loosely structured schedule, the Black Voices retreat allows you ample time and space to engage in writing, illustrating, or simply exploring. We will host a virtual Q & A with editor Sydnee Monday from Kokila Books.
3rd Annual Idlewild Writers Conference. August 8 - 9, 2025: Idlewild, MI. Two-day writers conference with readings, workshops, manuscript consultations and a book fair. Gary Copeland Lilley, Poet-in-Residence.
Don't you wonder sometimes…about sound and vision? — a fiction non-fiction freewrite event with Kate Copeland. August 9, 2025: Online. The gift of Sound & Vision…right what David Bowie showed us! And so many others…The Go-Go’s got the beat, Aretha sang of Respect for a Natural Woman. Adding to this: in motion pictures we see working girls and hidden figures, plus Thelma, Louise and Frida too. In this 90 minute workshop, we will look at the harmony between song, film, words and the brain hemispheres! The non-fiction part is composed of lyrical memory, linguistic film theory, and prosody in poetry and linguistics.
International Women's Writing Guild Workshops and Retreats. August 9 - 28, 2025: Mostly online. See website for individual workshops and dates.
Working Retreat: Novels in Verse. August 10 - 13, 2025: Boyds Mills, PA. Verse Novelists, Novelists, and Poets, join Rajani LaRocca and Chris Baron for time to create and connect. Ideal for those working on a verse novel at any level, even in the idea stage.
Elk River Writers Workshop. August 10 - 15, 2025: Chico Hot Springs, MT. The Elk River Writers Workshop embodies the idea that deep, communal experiences with the wild open the door to creativity. We bring together some of the most celebrated nature writers in the United States with students who are serious about fostering a connection with the environment in their writing. It all happens at Chico Hot Springs, a historic retreat just north of Yellowstone National Park.
Murphy Writing of Stockton University: Live Free and Write. August 10 - 15, 2025:
Sunapee, NH. "Combine an extended writing retreat with a relaxing summer vacation in the picturesque mountains of New Hampshire. This getaway blends our trademark challenging and supportive workshop experience with plenty of free time for you to write and bask in the refreshing New England summer." Odyssey Writing Workshop. August 11, 2025 (12 weeks): Online. Since its inception in 1996, Odyssey has become one of the most highly respected workshops for writers of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Will be held online. Application deadline April 1.
Getting the Gig: A Two-Night Mini on Speaking Opportunities for Storytellers. August 12 - 14, 2025: Online. Whether you want to set up school visits, participate in literary festivals, and/or pitch your ideas to storyteller organizations, Alyssa Reynoso-Morris wants to help you “get the gig!" and "get paid!"
Multimedia Writing: Hybrid Prose/Poetry. August 13, 2025: Online. This virtual workshop will be an introduction to multimedia writing, a hybrid genre that refers to writing in which multiple types of media are used in evocative, resonant, and innovative ways. We will unpack multimedia approaches through a range of forms including cine-poetry and collage using exploratory questions such as: How can incorporating other forms of media / a variety of elements beyond text enhance the intended impact of a poem? What questions, tensions, and complications can help guide you through the multimedia, hybrid creative process? In this workshop we will engage with form-ranging projects from writers including Victoria Chang, Claudia Rankine, Jennifer S. Cheng, Eloisa Amezcua, and more. The workshop will also provide time to free write and share work, to talk about how the writing process felt/went, and to share resources as well as further recommended reading.
Nonfiction Retreat: Science, Nature, Biography, and More. August 13 - 16, 2025: Boyds Mills, PA.. If you have an idea or draft of a nonfiction project and need a little support to move your work ahead, this retreat is for you! You’ll enjoy presentations, guided outdoor experiences, small group discussions of your work, and so much more with nonfiction writers Miranda Paul, Heather L. Montgomery, and their guests.
Waitlisted.
Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. August 13 - 23, 2025: Ripton, VT. Workshops in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction are at the core of the conference. Each faculty member conducts a workshop that meets for five two-hour sessions over the course of the 10 days. Groups are kept small to facilitate discussion, and all participants meet individually with their faculty leaders to elaborate on workshop comments. Faculty members also offer lectures on issues around literary writing and one-hour classes on specific aspects of the craft. Readings by the faculty, conference participants, and guests take place throughout the day and into the night. Participants meet with visiting editors, literary agents, and publishers who provide information and answer questions, individually or in small groups. Application deadline February 1.
Travel Writers & Photographers Conference. August 14 – 17, 2025: Corte Madera, Calif. Writing and photography workshops in the morning, a full afternoon of panels and discussions, and evening faculty presentations. There are optional, working field trips to explore the resources of the Bay Area. The faculty includes publishers, magazine editors, photographers, travel essayists, food writers, restaurateurs, guidebook writers, and more.
Hurston/Wright Summer Writers Week. August 14 - 18, 2025: Rutgers. For more than 20 years, the Hurston/Wright Summer Writers Workshop has offered a safe space for Black writers in intensive workshop sessions and master classes. Workshops are led by award-winning writers who are influencing today’s literature. The program features critiques, craft talks, writing time and public readings. Hurston/Wright workshops serve emerging and experienced writers who are starting projects, developing projects or seeking to polish projects. More than a thousand writers have participated in workshops since the first session in 1996.
See website for individual workshops.
The 2025 Online Chesapeake Writing Workshop. August 15-16, 2025: Online. This writing event is a wonderful opportunity to get intense instruction over the course of one day, pitch a literary agent or editor (optional), get your questions answered, and more. Note that there are limited online “seats” at the event (200 total).
Poetry at the Frost Farm. August 15 - 17, 2025: Derry, New Hampshire. The retreat offers workshops, readings, and one-on-one consultations for formalist poets. "Join a small community of people at the historic Robert Frost Farm learning, reading and writing formal poetry with contemporary award-winning poets. Choose your focus from a series of offerings designed to provide tools for beginning poets as well as perfect the mastery of published poets."
Whole Novel Workshop: An In-Person Retreat for Novelists. August 17 - 22, 2025: Boyds Mills, PA. This intensive, transformative Whole Novel Workshop offers writers the rare opportunity to have the entire draft (up to 80,000 words) of a novel read by faculty, with detailed written feedback and two private consultations provided. Attention in an intimate setting makes this program one that guarantees significant progress in preparation for submission. Apply by June 3, 2025.
Big Picture Revision: A Two-Night Mini with Editor Harold Underdown. August 19 - 21, 2025: Online. Get a smart, strategic boost for your manuscript with Harold Underdown’s quick-hit course on 'big picture' revision techniques for children's writers.
Killer Nashville Writers’ Conference. August 21 - 24, 2025: Nashville, TN. The Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference was created in 2006 by author/filmmaker Clay Stafford in an effort to bring together forensic experts, writers, and fans of crime and thriller literature. "At the conference, we try diligently to ensure that the weekend has something for every writer and lover of literature, and our sessions are structured to assist writers on multiple career levels. Our learning tracks tackle the craft of writing, business of writing, marketing, and forensics. Killer Nashville features nine breakout sessions for intense smaller group interaction, an authors’ bar (free for hotel guests), a moonshine and wine tasting, free agent/editor roundtable pitch sessions, a mock crime scene designed by special agents and other law enforcement professionals, cocktail receptions, the Guest of Honor Dinner and Awards Banquet, film previews, live music performances and—of course—all the great activities one can enjoy in downtown Nashville."
Colrain Classic. August 22 - 25, 2025: Online. "The Colrain Manuscript Classic is a highly focused, 3.5 day conference designed for poets with manuscripts in progress. The Classic features in-depth pre-conference work and candid, realistic evaluation and feedback from nationally-known poets, editors and publishers. In preparation, participants work at home on pre-conference assignments and then, in the workshop, review, arrange, and winnow their work based on the pre-conference work. In addition to the manuscript preparation workshop and editor sessions, there will be an editorial Q&A, and an after-conference strategy session."
Will be conducted online.
PJ Library Retreat: Picture Book Summer Camp. August 24 - 28, 2025: Boyds Mills, PA. "If you’re a pre-published author with a Jewish picture book in progress (or no more than one published book) we invite you to apply for five-days of inspiration, mentorship, fun, and creativity on the beautiful campus of the Highlights Foundation." Application deadline March 16.
DragonCon. August 28 - September 1, 2025: Atlanta, Ga. HUGE sci-fi event, with parade, autograph sessions, live performances, readings, wrestling (!), workshops on belly dancing, writing (yes, there's even some writing), art show. (This conference sounds really wild.)
Bear River Writers’ Conference. August 28 - September 1, 2025: Camp Michigania on Walloon Lake, near Petoskey, Michigan. Workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, as well as readings, discussions, nature walks, and time to write.
WriterCon. August 29 - September 1, 2025: Waterford, Oklahoma. The annual WriterCon Conference is three days of 60+ speakers providing more than 80 sessions designed to cover all genres and all aspects of the writing experience: skills, industry knowledge, opportunities, networking, pitching, contests, opportunities to meet with writers privately, to obtain manuscript reviews or private consultations, and much more.
The Gathering. August 30 - September 1, 2025. Workshops in poetry as well as readings. 2-hour Workshops & Readings Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday. Participant Open Mics Friday and Saturday night. Will be held on Zoom.